HINARI (Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative) and AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) are sister programs which offer free or very low cost access to scientific journals for the developing countries. HINARI is coordinated by the World Health Organization and AGORA by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in collaboration with the scientific publishers and other partners. This article describes the programs and how they work together to share the costs of system development and outreach and training. The article presents early feedback on the use of AGORA since its launch in October 2003. Challenges and barriers to uptake are also described.

Research4Life is a public-private partnership of the WHO, FAO, UNEP, Cornell and Yale Universities and the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers. Working together with technology partner Microsoft, the partnership’s goal is to help attain six of the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015, reducing the scientific knowledge gap between industrialized countries and the developing world.

The HINARI Programme, set up by WHO together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. More than 7,000 journal titles are now available to health institutions in 109 countries, areas and territories benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers, and in turn, contributing to improved world health.

Online Access to Research in the Environment OARE, an international public-private consortium coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University, and leading science and technology publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of environmental science research.